FOUR budding filmmakers and animators at Doreen Primary School have been shortlisted for a national film award.
The students made a 14-minute film, including animation, about their schoolyard cubbies and are among 10 finalist in the primary school “live action” section of the awards run by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
ACMI received almost 400 entries across its three categories in the Screen It competition.
Doreen primary art teacher Dianne Zobel said grade 5 student Kane, and grade 6 students Max, Ryan and Darcy took the ACMI theme of “belonging” and applied it to their “history of cubby making”, which forged strong friendships and their sense of belonging to the school.
The children had started at the school and built many cubbies over the years, so a section of the film is on “cubby archaeology”, where they unearth the remains of their earlier structures and “roads”.
“The kids were so inventive,” Ms Zobel said. “They built a shaker plant with pulley systems to raise the dirt then run it through a sieve and shake it to make it safe [free from debris] to lay down as a floor.”
Winners of the Screen It competition will be announced on November 19. Two other Victorian schools are among the finalists. To view the film made by the Doreen students, visit doreenps.vic.edu.au/cubbies.htm.
